Why We Don't Build More Apartments for Families
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2023
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The vast majority of urban apartments in the US are geared towards single occupants, couples without kids or maybe young professionals with roommates. It's hard to find apartments with the kind of layout that would fit families. Anyone who's gone looking for that type of space is probably familiar with bedrooms that look and feel like closets, or if you do find an apartment that has multiple good-sized bedrooms, it probably costs a fortune. So why is this the case? Why is so much apartment construction skewed towards non-families, and why does there seem to be an inherent assumption in the real estate market that families will always want to live in houses out in the suburbs? On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we explore the hidden incentives and regulations that deter builders from making more family-friendly buildings. We speak with real estate developer Bobby Fijan, and also Stephen Jacob Smith, executive director at the Center for Building in North America, for their perspective.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | As of 9-1-2023, you may earn a 5.5% annualized yield with 6-month T-bills of hell to maturity. |
| 0:06.4 | But who's got time to purchase US Treasuries? Doesn't that involve going to a bank? Or navigating |
| 0:10.8 | a government website that looks like it was designed in 1996? Turns out, you can go to public.com, |
| 0:15.8 | purchase Treasury bills in seconds, and you may be able to earn some of the highest yields we've |
| 0:19.6 | seen since the year 2000. Visit public.com slash T-Bill podcast to get started. This is a paid |
| 0:25.5 | endorsement by public.com, fees and conditions apply. Treasury accounts at public.com or through |
| 0:30.3 | GICO Securities Inc. Member Finra and SIPC. Full disclosures can be found at www.public.com slash T-Bill |
| 0:36.9 | podcast. The world needs solutions. On October 24th at the London edition of the Bloomberg |
| 0:42.0 | Technology Summit, join leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs to discuss technologies that are |
| 0:46.9 | poised to solve our most pressing global challenges. From reducing CO2 emissions and making cities |
| 0:52.9 | more livable to affordable health care and combating food insecurity, |
| 0:57.4 | executives from Deliveroo, Siemens, Graphcore and more will examine where tech innovation can take us. |
| 1:03.2 | Learn more at BloombergLive.com slash TX Summit 2023. |
| 1:09.6 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wyzenthog. |
| 1:23.6 | And I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, you know, we did a recent episode on rent and whether the price |
| 1:29.5 | of rent is ever going to go down. And I asked the question, like, why don't they ever build new |
| 1:34.1 | apartment buildings for families? Totally unself interested question. From here on out, now that our |
| 1:41.3 | years of just doing supply chain episodes are going to come to an end, let's just do episodes |
| 1:45.7 | about our own personal growth. Our own personal frustrations. We're all the dog amenities for |
| 1:51.4 | apartments. That's my question. That's the thing. There's plenty of buildings with dog amenities. |
| 1:57.5 | And as I have two kids and sometimes we look at new apartments and they're like, I want |
| 2:03.6 | like a building with dog amenities and billiard rooms and gyms and dorm and all that stuff. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.